Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade

by H. R. F. Keating

  He looked at the black-jacketed figure in front of him.

  ‘Nope. Not me. Guess the news was all around the joint. Even they knew.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The other big shots. Them.’

  Ghote nodded.

  ‘Why did the big shot himself hide the gold?’ he asked, feeling his heart beat faster with every mention of Frank Masters.

  Edward G. began to shrug this one off.

  Then suddenly his attitude changed. He looked up at Ghote with eyes bright in his old man’s face.

  ‘You want me to tell?’ he said. ‘I could tell good.’

  Ghote had control enough of himself to smile.

  ‘Not interested in any more of those stories of yours,’ he said.

  Edward G. laughed.

  ‘Was a honey,’ he said. ‘Went down a wow before.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Ghote said.

  The boy looked up to the washed-out blue of the sky.

  ‘We gonna hit the road yet?’ he asked, nonchalantly flicking one of the many buzzing flies off his taper-thin thigh.

  ‘Soon enough, soon enough,’ Ghote replied. ‘Maybe you’d care to tell where this Amrit guy is hanging out right now?’

  Edward G. shrugged.

  ‘Right now the guy’s on the trail,’ he said.

  Ghote experienced a sudden vision, triggered off by this unlikely jumble of film talk, of the big Sikh loping along a dust track dressed in a ten-gallon hat, smoking a big cigar and with a sub-machine gun tucked under his arm.

  ‘You wanna see the guy?’ Edward G. asked.

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘Be right here tomorrow round about this time,’ the boy said.

  Ghote snatched a hungry glance at his watch. Ten o’clock. At ten tomorrow morning he would have Amrit Singh under his hand.

  He took a deep breath.

  This time he would not exult. He had been very lucky, and the luck might not hold. Besides could he really trust Edward G.?

  He looked at the boy coolly.

  ‘You’re mighty ready to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Sure am,’ said the boy.

  The crinkled face looked up at him. The familiar twisted grin manifested itself.

  ‘With all you policias around, you’d pick the guy up pretty quick. So why not spill the beans? And besides …’

  A dangerously thin hand was held out.

  Cupped.

  Ghote knew better than to take his new friends completely on trust. Hardly had the police truck disappeared down Wodehouse Road in the direction of the Afghan Church with the gang clustered in the rear and the rigid back of the young driver signalling utter disapproval, than he had turned and sprinted for the telephone.

  C.I.D. Records confirmed that Amrit Singh was still nowhere in sight. Yes, it was most likely he was out of Bombay.

  So far so good.

  He asked to be transferred to the Fingerprint Bureau. Yes, they had got a lot of prints from the dispensary at the Masters Foundation, and a bloody waste of – Amrit Singh? The tone of the conversation changed rapidly. There was a remarkably short pause, and then an excited voice.

  ‘Yes, sir. Definitely yes, Inspector. Prints of Amrit Singh’s in the dispensary. Quite definitely. Thank you very much, Inspector.’

  Ghote asked whether the Sikh’s prints could also be found on the packet of broken brown glass or the black screw-top he had brought in later. They would check. It would take time but they would check. If it wasn’t that the defence would insist on every precaution, they would find them there in five minutes.

  No, all right. They would play it the inspector’s way.

  Ghote banged down the phone and stood for an instant thinking. What next? Yes, another of the facts he had stored away during his productive talk with Edward G.

  The key. Amrit Singh had entered the dispensary with a key. A key he had got from ‘that two-timer’ Sonny Carstairs.

  Ghote thought about Sonny for a few moments, and evolved a plan of action.

  About an hour later, an hour spent mostly in allowing the reporters waiting at headquarters to extract a cautiously optimistic statement, Ghote watched two constables march into his little office in a great clatter of heavy boots and swinging brawny arms. Between them hung the neat figure of the little Anglo-Indian dispenser.

  Ghote dismissed the constables and waited till the door had shut. Then he asked Sonny to sit down on the square-looking, heavy little wooden chair in front of his desk. Sonny sat with his knees close together and one hand clutching the other.

  For an instant he looked down and flicked his fingers straight so that he could see the nails.

  ‘I asked you to come to see me because a very serious matter has been brought to my notice,’ Ghote said slowly.

  Sonny looked at him across the lined and blotched surface of the desk.

  For a little while Ghote kept silent.

  After the hours of steadily burning sun the day was by now decidedly hot. Sonny began gently to sweat.

  ‘In the course of inquiries,’ Ghote began again at last, ‘it has come to light that a certain person obtained unauthorized access to the dispensary at the Masters Foundation.’

  He left it at that once more. Sonny clearly felt obliged to say something.

  ‘How –? How did this person do – do that?’

  ‘You know the answer perfectly well.’

  ‘No, Inspector. Really I don’t. I think perhaps you must have got a false impression. I’m afraid I can’t help you on this. Yes, yes. I’m sorry, I can be of no help at all. If you’ll excuse me. So, if you’ll excuse me …’

  Sonny stood up.

  Ghote recalled once again how when he had begun to question Sonny sharply about the arsenic trioxide he had in a panicky gesture swept the jar to the ground. Perhaps that had been just acting so as to get rid of incriminating evidence. But he had not thought so then, and nor had he when he had decided to haul Sonny into the intimidating atmosphere of headquarters. Now was the time to prove it.

  He glanced sharply up at Sonny.

  ‘Sit down,’ he shouted.

  For half a second Sonny stood stock-still.

  Then slowly he subsided on to the squat wooden chair.

  ‘So you cannot help me on this,’ Ghote went on. ‘So you would like to be excused. I will bet you would. No wonder you cannot help me. You cannot help me because you are to blame.’

  ‘No, no. Really, no. Honest to God, man, it isn’t so.’

  ‘What happened to the key of that hut?’

  ‘Nothing did. Honestly, nothing.’

  ‘It is the only key, is that not so?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Of course you do. You admitted it to me. It is the only key to that hut. Is that not so?’

  ‘I – I suppose it is.’

  ‘And someone else got hold of it. I want to know how.’

  ‘I can’t say. I can’t say.’

  ‘Can’t you indeed?’

  Ghote allowed a gleam of malice to come into his eyes.

  ‘Can’t you indeed?’ he repeated slowly. ‘Then we will have to see what we can do to help you, will we not?’

  ‘No.’

  He knew then that he had been right. The note of fear was too plain.

  ‘Oh yes, we will,’ he said, leaning forward across the desk till his face was only a couple of feet from Sonny’s.

  ‘You know that we have ways of helping people’s memories in this department?’

  ‘But – But it isn’t allowed.’

  ‘No, it is not allowed.’

  He paused.

  ‘But that does not mean it is not done. Now, that key. Who did you let take it? Answer now, or we will go downstairs.’

  It was the last, innocent enough phrase that did the trick. Sonny went grey under the sheen of the sweat. He licked his lips.

  ‘You know Amrit Singh, Inspector?’ he said in a half-whisper.

  Ghote nodded.

  ‘He made me g
ive it to him. You won’t understand.’

  Ghote thought he understood very well. Sonny was not a difficult man to make do what you wanted.

  ‘When did he take it?’ he said, not letting the pressure up.

  ‘It was going on for eight o’clock last night, Inspector. I was just up in my little room on the roof. He suddenly came in. It was through the window. I knew him. He’d been consorting with the boys. I’d heard them talking about him. I knew what sort of man he was. Of low moral character. He demanded the key. What else could I do, Inspector?’

  ‘So you handed it to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A total whisper now.

  ‘And later he gave it back?’

  ‘Yes. I begged him to. I said that, if he did, no one would ever know he’d had it. So after I’d given it to him I just sat there on the edge of my bed and waited. And after about quarter of an hour I heard a bit of noise out on the roof. And then suddenly the key came whizzing in. It hit me, Inspector. Look.’

  Sonny quickly began tearing at the buttons of his jacket.

  Ghote thought with amusement that it was exactly like Amrit Singh to have returned the key by throwing it good and hard at the poor dupe he had got it from.

  ‘Undressing will not be necessary,’ he said sharply.

  Sonny fumbled for a bit trying to do the buttons up again. Then he stopped.

  Ghote stood up.

  ‘You can go now,’ he said. ‘Though I must warn you that you have not heard the last of this.’

  He walked over to the door and held it wide.

  He was longing to see the back of the wretched Anglo-Indian. Only then could he indulge for a few moments in pure exultation. This was enough. He was sure of it. Amrit Singh’s fingerprints in the dispensary. Some evidence to come about a consignment of gold seized by Frank Masters. It should be easy enough to tie that up. And finally this plain, incredible statement that Amrit Singh had obtained the key of the dispensary where the poison was kept only a short time before Frank Masters had eaten the fatal meal. This time he had got the big Sikh. Good and proper.

  Because this time the master thug had made one mistake. He had misjudged his catspaw. He might have guessed that Sonny would be as easy to break as a wisp of straw. But he must have relied on him keeping quiet at all costs about letting the key out of his possession. He ought to have known better than to trust such a soft creature for anything.

  ‘Out you go,’ Ghote said.

  Sonny got up from the heavy little chair with reluctance. He approached the door Ghote was holding open as if what lay beyond was bound to be unpleasant.

  For a moment he paused and looked at the inspector.

  ‘Go on,’ Ghote said impatiently. ‘I have a great deal to do.’

  ‘But don’t you want me to tell you who else made me give them the key last night?’ he said.

  Sonny looked up at him.

  SIX

  Inspector Ghote’s tower of exultant thoughts collapsed in an instant about his head. He could hardly believe that the despised Sonny Carstairs had said what he had. Yet the words had been clear enough. He had let the only key of the dispensary out of his keeping, not once but twice. The evidence against Amrit Singh was suddenly totally dubious.

  Ghote stared at the neat figure of the Anglo-Indian dispenser. Perhaps if he had not treated him so contemptuously, he would have been alerted to the fact that there was more evidence to come. He sighed and resolved not to despise another witness ever again.

  ‘You gave that key to two people?’ he said.

  Sonny Carstairs, smarting still from the treatment dealt out to him, evidently enjoyed Ghote’s present discomfiture.

  ‘Of course I gave it to two of them, man,’ he said.

  Ghote was not going to stand this.

  ‘And who was this second person?’ he snapped. ‘It was bad enough to let Amrit Singh have it. Who else did you give it to?’

  Sonny Carstairs gave him the hint of a smile, quiet and self-satisfied.

  ‘I gave it to Mr Chatterjee,’ he said.

  ‘To Mr Chatterjee, the social worker at the Foundation?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what was this for? Does he have access to the dispensary? Was there some special need?’

  Sonny Carstairs shrugged.

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me what it was for, man,’ he replied. ‘It was only a little while after Amrit Singh threw – after he gave me back the key. A knock came at my door. It was Krishna Chatterjee. He said he desired to speak to me urgently. I let him into my room and he asked me for the key.’

  ‘And you just handed it over?’

  The dispenser looked a little put out for the first time since he had produced his bombshell.

  ‘Well, no. No, I didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘But you told you let him have the key.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, in the end I did.’

  ‘He threatened you like Amrit Singh?’

  Ghote thought of the social worker, whom he had seen on his tour of the Foundation the night before. He formed physically a complete contrast to the big, tough Sikh thug. He was a smallish, round-faced, slightly plump Bengali with a gentle, bubbling manner and big, soft almond-shaped eyes for ever flitting here and there. It was difficult to imagine him threatening to batter the life out of anybody at all, even the neat little Sonny Carstairs.

  ‘No, Inspector, not threatened really,’ Sonny said.

  ‘What then? You gave him the key. He was not meant to have it. Did he give you reason?’

  ‘No, Inspector. That was the hell of it. He refused absolutely to say why he wanted it. That was when he said he would tell – That was when I refused to let him have it.’

  Sonny drew himself up with a touch of pride.

  ‘You refused to let him have it,’ Ghote said. ‘Yet he went away with it all right. What happened?’

  ‘I just sort of changed my mind, Inspector.’

  ‘When he said he would do what? Come on, out with it. You are in trouble enough as it is.’

  Any tendency to resistance in the dispenser had been well and truly rolled out of him in the earlier part of the interview. Now he simply swallowed once.

  ‘He said he would tell Mr Masters about the drugs,’ he muttered.

  It did not take Ghote long to realize what this must mean.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘so we have the misapplication of drugs to take into account also.’

  He took a longer look at Sonny.

  ‘But you are not addict, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Honest to God, no, Inspector,’ Sonny babbled. ‘But just sometimes I used to take a sniff of ether or something. Till Mr Chatterjee caught me one day. And he said if he ever suspected I was doing it again he’d have me sacked – dismissed.’

  ‘I see. And he threatened to have you sacked again if you did not hand over the key?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, Inspector.’

  ‘But he did not tell you why he wanted it? Not at all? Not a hint even?’

  ‘No, Inspector, honestly.’

  ‘Then I will have to ask.’

  But before Ghote put his question to Krishna Chatterjee he got a chance to ask another which had worried him perhaps even more. If the social worker had gone to the trouble of bullying the key out of Sonny Carstairs, surely he must have used it. After all, he had returned it in time for Sonny to open the dispensary up again when Frank Masters had had to receive treatment. So two people would have entered the hut that evening. But Edward G. and the gang had said nothing about a second visitor.

  Ghote felt let down. After all that he had done to come down to the level of these boys, after all those silly games, they still had not been fair with him.

  As soon as he had got rid of Sonny he had rushed down to his truck and told the driver to get round to the Masters Foundation as fast as possible. The Dodge drew up in the gravelly drive with a great screeching of brakes. As Ghote had half hoped, the noise and dust of their arrival immediately conj
ured up the familiar apparition in tattered and torn black plastic jacket.

  The boy evidently believed that his relations with Ghote were still in the same comfortable state as when he had set off on the promised jaunt in the police truck. He sauntered carelessly up. Behind him the gang approached in an equally happy-go-lucky way.

  ‘Hi,’ said Edward G.

  Ghote waited till he came right up close. Then his hand shot out and closed firmly round the battered black jacket.

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘You are just the one I want.’

  The boy blinked at him in utter astonishment. There could be no doubt that this time the inspector had the upper hand.

  ‘Now,’ Ghote barked, ‘just what do you mean by not telling that Mr Chatterjee went in the dispensary also?’

  For an instant the question really worried the boy. Then the old, wry half-grin sent the deep wrinkles of his face off into new convolutions.

  ‘You never ask,’ he said. ‘You wanna learn that, fella. Don’t ask: don’t get.’

  ‘I’ll teach you to fella me,’ Ghote shouted suddenly.

  All the rage at his disappointment over having had Amrit Singh so neatly trapped boiled unexpectedly up. He gathered up the tattered black jacket in his fist.

  But Edward G. had enraged too many people in his short life not to know the signs to a hairsbreadth. And in a moment Ghote found himself holding the filthy old jacket while its owner danced back to the edge of the gravel and stood on tiptoe looking at him, wearing only a grimy pair of shorts.

  Ghote glowered.

  ‘You knew it was important if anyone got into dispensary,’ he said. ‘I asked you specially about Amrit Singh, and you had the damned cheek to say nothing about Mr Chatterjee.’

  His reply did not come from Edward G. himself. As if by some signal, he deputed the task to his lieutenant, the boy called Tarzan. And the reply was characteristic.

  With a sudden wild whoop the boy launched himself high into the air and with the tips of his outstretched fingers caught hold of the edge of the beam supporting the roof of the front-door porch. From there he swung forward without a break. His legs were extended, his bare toes pointed. He came flying towards Ghote before the inspector had time to realize what was happening. A long, sharp, extremely dirty, big toe-nail just perceptibly flicked him on the nose. And then the boy was swinging back, and a moment later had dropped lightly to his feet and had darted off with the others out of sight round the back of the house.